CRITICAL NOTES.—
Ecclesiastes 4:13. Better is a poor and a wise child.] Not in the moral point of view, but happier—better off.
Ecclesiastes 4:14. For out of prison he cometh to reign.] Reference is made to the youth mentioned in the previous verse. The writer may have had the history of Joseph in his mind. Born in his kingdom becometh poor. Came to the possession of his kingly dignity by birth. His dethronement is the condition of the sudden elevation of this youth.
Ecclesiastes 4:15. All the living which walk under the sun, with the second child.] The great number of the adherents of this upstart who has seized the throne.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Ecclesiastes 4:13-16
THE INSTABILITY OF THE HIGHEST DIGNITIES
I. They are subject to the saddest reverses. The most favoured pets of fortune are not spared the common burden of human sorrow. Placed on a lofty eminence, there is below them a depth into which they might, at any time, fall: The pen of history has often described how the mighty have been pushed down from their seats. Here we have the picture of a dethroned king. (Ecclesiastes 4:14.) We cannot expect otherwise than that such reverses will occur in the course of human affairs.
1. Great principles must be vindicated against the mere assertion of rank and authority. When the king is foolish, and will no more be admonished (Ecclesiastes 4:13), he cannot wonder that his subjects will endure him no longer. The patience of nations is not infinite. Long oppression exhausts it. The time arrives when great principles must be upheld as of superior importance to rank and authority.
2. It is often necessary to secure the public good even at any cost to individuals. The great and the powerful have often been robbed of their dignity in order to save the state. The public good must be secured against the selfishness and tyranny of Kings.
3. The season comes when it is expedient to render worth and wisdom a well-deserved honour. (Ecclesiastes 4:14.) There are men, now living in obscurity, who by their talents and wisdom are fitted to govern empires. The hour comes when these royal minds must have a true place and honour. Hence many born to the kingdom have been thrust down from their thrones to give place to those to whom nature has given greater fitness for empire and command.
4. Kings may be the victims of popular fury. They may come upon an evil time, and, through no fault of their own, be the victims of conspiracy and rebellion.
II. The most fortunate have often but a brief triumph. The able and deserving man, when the world acknowledges his merit, and the time is ripe, sometimes rises from a humble sphere to sit upon a throne. Such extraordinary changes of condition are not unknown to history. He who attains to this splendid gift of fortune, awakens the enthusiasm of the multitude, who are ever prone to idolize success. Such a case is described. (Ecclesiastes 4:16.)
1. He has a crowd of adherents. Such men are endowed with great power to influence and command others. Multitudes give a momentum to feeling—followers increase. Mankind are easily led in droves. His dominion is very wide. (Ecclesiastes 4:15.)
2. He is exposed to the most disastrous changes of popular feeling and opinion. The time comes when the favourite is rejected. The people no longer rejoice in him. (Ecclesiastes 4:16.) Popular feeling is not to be trusted. The hero of to-day may be the victim of to-morrow. He who has risen to the throne by real merit, may become corrupted by success, and give way to deeds of folly and misrule. The injured feeling of the nation at length recoils upon him with terrible retribution.
III. Earthly Dignities, in their changes, furnish a picture of human life. Kings in their brief reign, and uncertain tenure of state and grandeur, are but a picture of the life of humanity through the ages.
1. Each generation witnesses great changes. The outward conditions of life are changed—new inventions multiply comforts, and give man a more complete dominion over nature. Nations frame new laws, and repeal old ones. The mechanism of Government is remodelled till the old order passes away.
2. Each generation has a marked character. Each is informed by the reigning spirit of society. The one idea which occupies the mind of the individual man, and fires his passion, is but a picture of the prevailing spirit of the age. Generations have a distinct character. In one the spirit of belief prevails; in another, doubt and scepticism. Now, there is almost an idolatrous reverence for authority; and, again, we fall upon an age of self-will and lawlessness. Every age has its own fashion of thought and feeling.
3. Each generation appears upon the scene of life but for a short time. Thrones have many succeeding occupants, and in “the hollow crown, that rounds the mortal temples of a King, death holds his court.” So generations, who have wielded a power through their little day, are soon gone. Nothing continues at one stay—“there is no end of all the people.”
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Ecclesiastes 4:13. Neither length of days nor exalted station can, of necessity, confer wisdom. A man may continue a fool with all the appliances of knowledge about him, and all the lessons of time spread before him.
The occupants of thrones do not always possess regal minds. Illustrious station only serves to make great faults the more conspicuous.
The greatness of life depends upon what we put into it, and not upon age, or outward conditions. A poor youth with the spirit of wisdom may have more real nobility than an old king.
Wisdom can irradiate poverty, and reveal the emptiness of mere earthly glory.
Rejecting admonition is often the forerunner to certain ruin.
To refuse admonition is in none a greater folly than in a king, because in none it is more pernicious, to none more dangerous; but to be grown old in wilful stubbornness, and self-conceited perverseness, as well as in years, and not only not to follow admonition, but not to hear it; as it is the extremity of folly, so it is the shame of honour, and maketh a poor wise child better worthy of it [Jermin].
Ecclesiastes 4:14. Providence sometimes asserts the right of the wise alone to bear the rule.
We may well take Joseph to be this poor wise child; for that he was a wise child his father’s love shewed, who therein may seem not so much as a father to have preferred his son before his other brethren, as a prophet rather to have preferred a mystery, in respect of that to which he foresaw the wisdom of his son would bring himself. But that he was also a poor child, the malice of his brethren who sold him for a captive made to be true. The rest God performed for him, and out of prison brought him to be the next in greatness in the kingdom. Yea, while he was in prison, what was he but even then a king? [Jermin].
There is no height of worldly grandeur so great but that Providence can fetch a man down from thence.
Through oppression, regal minds have sometimes languished in a prison. Some few have stepped from thence to a throne. Providence thus shows, that in the future kingdom, the wise shall bear the rule.
Even the glory of birth and station fails to lend a lustre to folly, or to save the foolish from a degrading fall.
Ecclesiastes 4:15. While men in power and authority have the people flocking about them, honouring and acknowledging them, they should be taken up with the thought of a change, and consider the people as walking with the man that shall come up in their stead, courting him; and themselves as shortly to fall one way or other [Nisbet].
The power of the future overshadows the present.
As the powerful, the aged, and the wise pass away, Providence raises up others to take their place.
How soon the splendour of the mighty grows pale. New candidates for popular applause arise, and the once-renowned hero finds to his sorrow that he survives his fame.
The future has an element of oppression as well as the past. These two gulfs overwhelm the mind. We can only find peace by commending our soul to that Infinite love which reigns over all.
Ecclesiastes 4:16. The most ardent worldly ambition must, sooner or later, receive a check from the hard facts of life.
The temper of future generations is but a reflection of that of the past. The facts of human nature remaining, the future can only repeat the old story of life, with all its changes, uncertainties, and reverses. Thus mankind is driven from age to age in the horse-mill round of vanity.
He who assumes the constancy of popular favour may have long leisure to repent his folly.
Every man advanced to eminency, power, or esteem among men, should look upon himself as standing upon a very slippery foundation, and particularly upon worldly applause, as a flower that will soon wither and become unsavoury. They should resolve to see their own applause die before themselves [Nisbet].